Monday, February 6, 2017

An Open Letter to my Colleagues in the Study of Mythology

David
Miller tells a charming anecdote in which Joseph Campbell delivers the
punchline, saying, “A myth ith ath good ath a sthmile,” punning on the idiom, a
miss is as good as a mile. More than simply recalling the incisorless speech of
a child, mything and missing are a conspicuous pair pertaining to the study of mythology
as well. There is, as Dr. Miller points out, something missing in our mything.

Indulge
me the telling of my own anecdote, one that I’ve heard in various settings and
circumstances my whole life, and has always suggested to me the peculiar
ability of my people to ignore discomfort or emotional disturbance. It goes
like this:

An English couple have a child. After the
birth, medical tests reveal that the child is normal, apart from the fact that
it is Norwegian. As the child grows older, it obsessively reads about farming
and farm implements and dresses in overalls, flannel shirts, and hand knit
sweaters bearing wintry designs, but all his basic functions develop normally.
He walks, eats, sleeps, learns, and so on, but for some reason the Norwegian
child never speaks. The concerned parents take the child to the doctor, who
reassures them that the child is normal in all other areas and he is sure there
is nothing to worry about and that the child will speak in time. Well, years
pass and the child becomes a teenager and still does not speak, although he
seems to be completely normal in all other respects. The Norwegian child’s
English mother is particularly distressed by her son’s apparent inability to
speak, but she tries to hide her worry and sadness from the child while she
works very hard to make her unfortunate child’s life comfortable. One day she
makes the now 17 year old, still silent child, a bowl of tomato soup and takes
it to him in his room where he is listening to music on the stereo. Not long
after, the child appears in the kitchen and suddenly says, “Mother. The soup is
a little tepid.” The astonished mother says, “All these years you never spoke a
word, and it appears you could speak all along! Why? Why did you never say
anything before?” “Because, mother,” answers the child, “up until now
everything has been fine.”

For most of my life, whenever I
heard one of the several variations of this joke, I merely chalked it up to a
gentle lampooning of Scandinavian stoicism. But now I find something deeper and
darker in this old joke, a disturbing truth about a cherished value, comfort.
This little anecdote reveals the disturbing shadow of comfort in that when one
becomes too comfortable one is removed from, or taken out of the stream of
life, one lives as an invalid. Being comfortable and certain, suppressing
dissonant voices and unwelcome experiences, creates a wound; a wound that
inhabits and inhibits individuals—as well as scholarly disciplines—as well as
intellectual discourse, and inhibits the development of more subtly complex
perceptions of the sublime mysteries to which one is exposed through the often
prosaic effort of living.If one is to
more deeply understand the sublilme mysterium which lives us, a willing
acceptance of the uncomfortable, discomfiting voice, the voice of the stranger
at the door, the speech of that which is disturbed and disturbing, is essential.
One must encourage the kind of disturbing conversations and inquiries which are
often missing from the methodology that we, in the Pacifica tribe, employ in
the study myth. And like the little Norwegian boy, I found that up until a few
years ago, the way we studied myth had been fine. But it is no longer fine, at
least not for me, and now I have something to say.

Considerations
of disturbance lead me to, once again, consider David Miller. In a keynote
address, in fact, the same speech in which he told the anecdote I previously
referenced[1],
Dr. Miller spoke of the need for those of us who employ what he calls a
synoptic study of mythology to address its criticisms. Upon reflection, I
believe Dr. Miller was characteristically generous in his understanding of our
understanding. Those of us who attended Pacifica Graduate Institute and who,
like myself, received a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies, run the risk of cultivating
an embarrassing self-deception because we did not really study mythology; we
did not study the source material that C.G. Jung, Joseph Campbell, and James
Hillman studied. Instead, we learned about Jung, Campbell, and Hillman, and
their psychological, metaphorical approaches to mythology. All too often
critiques of that, largely psychological, method were received as ad homonym
attacks rather than legitimate, albeit disturbing, appraisals. Professor Miller
assumed, perhaps over-optimistically, that those of us listening in full
sympathy with him on the cusp of that Labor Day weekend in 2012 knew full well
what he meant when he uttered the word synoptic. I know that I thought I
knew. I knew that the word synoptic meant that several different
stories, perhaps by several different authors, writing in different places and
at different times, despite their lack of correspondence or consistency, all
told the same story. I was sure that I knew that the word synoptic meant
that different narratives point to the same meaning—in the case of myth, a
psychological meaning—and I became enthused to write just such a synoptic
methodology for the study of myth and answer critics like Roland Barthes, Bruce
Lincoln, and even our own academic sibling, Sophia Heller (whose work holds no
small appeal for me). Not surprisingly, as a psychotherapist the program running
in the background dictated that, for me, the best use of myth is that use which
clarifies and valorizes the human-all-too-human condition. Other, unconsidered
and "irrelevant," perspectives
had been of little importance and held only a marginal interest for me.
Perspectives like that of, say, William Faulkner’s, himself a great
mythographer who is supposed to have said, “One of Keats’ odes is worth any
number of old women;” or that of Roland Barthes, who seemed to aggressively
suggest that myth “…is stolen speech” and is best understood semiotically, or even
the notion of Goethe’s in which he insists that the presented form of myth is
not allegorical or metaphorical but is itself an Ur-phenomenon, or in other
words, the reality that a Greek statue of Aphrodite is not a mere representation
of the goddess, but is itself nature manifesting in material form, the very
form love would necessarily take were it to become incarnate.

So
I wrote David a longish letter about
my plan to write a methodology for the synoptic study of mythology illustrating
that all myths had one meaning—namely, a psychological one—to which he
responded that that would be a fine idea, and that since he didn’t have
ownership of the word synoptic, I could use that word however best I saw fit,
but he wanted me to know that the way I used the word was not how he used the
word. Professor Miller borrowed the term from Feldman and Richardson (The Rise of Modern Mythology 1680-1860),
a term which they used in the early 70’s to argue for a return to treating myth
as a “master field” unto itself, a primary subject which could be used to
illuminate other disciplines rather than the other way around, causing
mythology to be embedded within other disciplines. For example, from a Jungian
perspective, archetypes are meant to “attract, to convince, to fascinate and to
overpower” (Archetypes of the Collective
Unconscious). Myths, in Jung’s conceptualization, are the epiphenomena of
archetypes, psychic products which are themselves twice removed from conscious
inspection or elaboration. From such a perspective mythology is in service to psychology,
and while that is very appealing to me, it is very far indeed from being the
only possible reason for the existence of myth. For instance, it is clearly
possible that it is not only differing levels of consciousness which are
responsible for the production of myth, for archetypal images are “…neither
evenly distributed, nor found on all continents” (Witzel, The Origins of the World’s Mythologies, 15). It may be that
physical and social environments, pathway dependencies, charismatic qualities
of political or spiritual leaders, and other individual and cultural factors all,
in some way, condition systems of mythology. As G.S. Kirk stated it, “Analysis
of a myth should not stop when one particular theoretical explanation has been
applied and found productive” (The Nature
of Greek Myths).

Because
I am nothing if not persistent, although I acknowledge that some call it perseveration,
let me return to Jung’s statement about archetypes, those productions of Psyche which he described as
overpowering, fascinating, and enthralling, or some words to that effect, and
which provide a very big clue to that with which mythology is engaged, and why
we find it so engaging. Jung’s language is very similar to the language the 18th
Century philosopher Immanuel Kant used in his descriptions of the sublime[2].
But the sublime is not a product of psyche; it is itself a totality which
exists outside of psyche and to which psyche may be exposed. As I recall, Kant
argued that the sublime has at least two dimensions, one of magnitude and the
other of force. In other words, when confronted with the sublime, the
experience is so big, so immense, that one simply cannot wrap one’s mind around
it; it is incomprehensible. In addition to its incomprehensibility, there is
the added and intense feeling of being overwhelmed in its presence and one’s
physical and emotional integrity feels threatened by an encounter with the
sublime. What makes the sublime even more disturbing is the feeling of
undeniable pleasure in the face of the apparent “counter-purposiveness,” as
Kant named it, and which one experiences as the disorganizing, distressing, and
disturbing effect upon cognition, emotion, and consciousness in general. One
would expect such an encounter to be painful, but instead the sublime encounter
evokes pleasure and an aesthetic experience one retrospectively understands to
be beauty.

Perhaps
it is, in fact, the sublime which is the proper subject of myth—that mysteriumtremendum which the logos
of myth attempts to render intelligible, and if this is so, the addressed
subject is so vast, so extensive, so interminable and immeasurable that only
one approach to its study, or a singular voice of understanding serves ultimately
to trivialize and domesticate an ungovernable and unfathomable reality. As
David Miller put it, “The danger is that we may be unaware and unconscious[3].”
Unaware and unconscious of the embedded political, theological, social, and
psychological agendas buried so deep within the psychological way we study myth
as to be unrecognized, we are more likely to further shackle than free, more
apt to obscure than illuminate, more likely to limit than restore mythography to
its rightful place as a master discipline. As the philosophical method referred
to as destructuralization has repeatedly demonstrated, what we see is
determined by what we cannot see; or as the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips writes,
“Our vision, […] what we are able to see, is sponsored by our blind spots;
[knowing] what we are determined not to know frees us and forces us to know
something else” (Becoming Freud). To
accomplish the knowing of what we do not know provokes and invites disturbance
and discomfiture, it demands from us a willingness to allow our senses to incorporate
something that initially appears insensible. But there is something else going
on in one’s experience of the sublime. One’s own ideas and intuitions (both
conscious and unconscious ideas of one’s own reason, which Kant suggests interact
with the sublime, if not actually constituting an aspect of it) are brought to bear on the
experience and eventually result in a harmony of reason with the sublime. With this
move, the sublime becomes “purposive” rather than “counter-purposive” and
creates a feeling of deep, acute pleasure. The deep disturbance is now matched
by a higher pleasure rising from the newly discovered purposiveness, and it
persuades us, as the poet Shelley noted, to forsake the easy for the harder
pleasures. Of course, one can’t shoehorn the sublime encounter into a
continuous state of being. The purposive and counterpurposive states are
alternating continually and neither of them wins out, which is to say that
experiencing the sublime subjects one to a disturbing, rapid alternation of
feelings and perceptual states[4].

If
myth is indeed the speech of the sublime (ology typically refers to the study
of something, but the root word is logos,
commonly taken to denote speech) then one, single, unopposed perspective is
nothing more than a blind alley in a welter of urban streets. Myth needs a
variety of approaches and voices in interposition to even begin to plunge its
limitless logos; it requires a cacophony of voices clambering to live in the awkward
fullness of life rather than seeking out a comfortable, banal, and ultimately
regressive paradise of belief. Campbell knew this very well, and while his
rhetoric or his imagery sometimes left the earth, he never did. And if there is
a hell, it is not to be found in some distant place either, but exists here and
now, formed by all of us together. It seems to me there are only a few ways out
of hell; one is common and used by many: fail to attend to the hell and become
so much a part of it that one no longer sees it. An alternative way, a
challenging path to be sure, demands that one live seeking out the sublime
encounter, a way of living and thinking that places one, more often than not,
uncomfortably outside of one’s pleasingly comfortable beliefs. This way out of
hell requires one to disregard easy pleasure and instead be determined to
recognize who and what voices, in the midst of hell are not hell, and subjecting
them to rigorous examination help them to be recognized and abide, creating a
space for them and in so doing, experience marvelous hopes, extraordinary
insights, and sublime pleasures, rendered all the more marvelous for their
difficult acquisition.

6 comments:

Priceless! When I read your words "restore mythography to its rightful place as a master discipline," I actually stopped and applauded aloud. I find no higher addiction than that of wanting to comprehend the sublime. To do so, one has to present one's body (on all levels and in all dimensions) as "a living sacrifice." The pulse alternates between destruction and regeneration. A painful process with seemingly no end. No conceptual net can snare the sublime. Thus the conceptual apparatus of today that provides a glimpse and a resonance of soul, a thrill, will fall away. One has been lifted high by the eagle, then dropped. Never the same, yet wanting more.

Wonderful. This reminded me of the dictum of Heinrich Zimmer's that Campbell liked to quote:

"The best things [truths of the transcendent/sublime] can't be told," because they transcend thought. "The second best [myths] are misunderstood," because those are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can't be thought about, and one gets stuck in the thoughts."The third best [science, history, etc.] are what we talk about.”

Bravo Brad! At the time at Pacifica, the psychological approach was so new to this lit. major that I gobbled it up. But toward the end of our schooling, I realize that we were committing the sin Tolkien discussed in "Beowulf, the monster and the critics." We talked about certain "approved" approaches to the study of myth, but, as you say, we seldom delved into the source material--the myths themselves. I feel that lack keenly, and work to remedy it. I wish the school would offer more actual myth study.